Chapter XVIIGreenland: Arctic Outpost

During 1940, while the United States had been looking to its
defenses in Alaska, Hawaii, and Panama, while the exchange of destroyers for a
string of Atlantic bases was under negotiation, and then, while plans and
preparations for developing the new bases were getting under way, Britain and
Canada were consolidating their position in the North Atlantic by stationing
troops in Iceland and were attempting to counter German activities in Greenland.
Although the United States Government had acquiesced in the garrisoning of
Iceland, it had no desire to see Britain make the same move into Greenland; for
Greenland, although a Danish colony, was, unlike Iceland, definitely within the
Western Hemisphere and within the scope of the Monroe Doctrine. Should Canada
take protective action in Greenland, it was feared that a precedent might be
established which would give Japan an excuse to seize the Netherlands East
Indies if the Germans invaded Holland. British, Canadian, and American diplomacy
went through a good many convolutions, more fittingly described elsewhere,
before the lines of policy took shape.1
The official American position, simply
stated, rested on nonintervention, on the traditional "hands off" policy of the
Monroe Doctrine, and on noninterference. The United States, for several reasons,
had refused to commit itself to the defense of Greenland and at the same time
had declared its objection to any military action in Greenland by Britain or
Canada or to any attempt on their part to establish control over Greenland.

The War Department's interest in Greenland was not at first a
very active one. Greenland figured to some extent in the RAINBOW 4 war
planning, and in this connection the advice of Arctic experts was sought and
studies undertaken that added considerably to the meager store of data the Army
had.2

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A number of possible sites for airfields, at the head of
Søndre Strømfjord, about six hundred miles up the western coast from Cape
Farewell, were disclosed by an Air Corps survey flight in August 1940, but the
Army made no plans for developing any of them. While this survey was in
progress, the State Department hastily called to the Army's attention a Canadian
proposal to establish a landing held on the southern tip of Greenland, near
Julianehaab, and, doubtless thinking it a matter over which the Army should be
concerned, the State Department spokesman, Assistant Secretary Adolph A. Berle,
Jr., was surprised when the War Department informed him that it had no objection
to the Canadian proposal.3

Growth of American Interest in Greenland

During the next six months the views of the War Department
changed. Strategic planning was shifting away from the dismal assumption that
Britain had only a small chance of surviving. American bases were under
construction in Newfoundland and American troops were there. And finally, new
data indicated that it was really possible to build an airfield in the vicinity
of Julianehaab. At the same time Mr. Berle was prodding the War and Navy
Departments with the suggestion that further inaction on the part of the United
States might result in the Canadians moving into Greenland. At a meeting in his
office on 6 February 1941, representatives of the War and Navy Departments agreed
that this would be less
desirable than if the defense of Greenland were to be in U.S. hands. The nature
of American military interests, as the war Department now viewed them, was
presented at the same meeting by Lt. Col. Clayton L. Bissell of the War Plans
Division. He summarized them as follows: first, the defense of the American
bases in Newfoundland and of the northeastern United States would be affected by
a military air base in Greenland; second, the United States should control
whatever aviation facilities were constructed in Greenland, or at least insist
on equal rights in the use and operation of any facilities built by anyone else;
and lastly, further German efforts to obtain weather data from Greenland were to
be expected. The conference ended in a general agreement and recommendation that
a survey party should be sent to Greenland

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to investigate airfield sites and to examine the possibility
of constructing the various facilities--radio, navigational aids, and the like--that
would be necessary for developing the airfields. It was further agreed that
it would be to the best interests of the United States if the Danish authorities
in Greenland were to undertake the actual construction with the financial and
technical assistance of the United States.4
These decisions were the springboard for all subsequent American activities in Greenland.

Presidential approval and the consent of the Danish
authorities in Greenland followed the conference of 6 February without much
delay. By the end of the month a Coast Guard vessel had been made available for
the survey party, lists of special clothing and equipment were being compiled,
and the Army members of the party were designated.5
Then, almost on the eve of
sailing, an important decision was made, which completely changed the
expedition's focus. At a meeting of Army, Navy, Coast Guard, and State
Department representatives in Mr. Berle's office on 5 March it was agreed that
"considerations of defense, jurisdiction, operation and maintenance" made
construction of the facilities by the Danish authorities in Greenland
impracticable, that the Army would therefore build the necessary landing fields,
and that the State Department would negotiate an appropriate agreement with the
responsible authorities.6
On 17 March the survey party under the command of
Comdr. William Sinton, USN, boarded the Coast Guard cutter Cayuga at Boston and
sailed for Greenland.7
A Royal Canadian Air Force observer accompanied the party.

After a difficult voyage through heavy ice the expedition
arrived in southern Greenland. In this area and in
the vicinity of Holsteinsborg and the Søndre Strømfjord at lease a dozen
possible sites were investigated, the most promising of which were at
Narsarssuak, Ivigtut, and Søndre Strømfjord, on the glacial moraine at
the head of the respective fjords.8

Meanwhile important developments had been taking place in
Washington. The ninth of April was the anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Denmark,

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and on this date an agreement guaranteeing the security of
Greenland with the United States as guarantor was signed by Secretary of State
Hull and Mr. Henrik Kauffman, the Danish Minister. Preparations for sending a
construction party and a defense force to Greenland were begun immediately. A
survey of the east coast, which the Air Corps had decided was necessary, was
quickly organized.9
The Greenland defense agreement was the culmination of the
State Department's efforts to meet the problem posed by the convergent interests
in Canada, Great Britain, and the United States; while these other preparations
followed both from the agreement itself and from the expanding activities of the
Air Corps.

With a bow in the direction of the Act of Havana, which
authorized unilateral measures of hemisphere defense in times of emergency, the
Hull Kauffman agreement gave the United States the right to construct, maintain,
and operate in Greenland such airfields, seaplane facilities, and other defense
facilities as were necessary to protect the sovereignty of Denmark and the
territorial integrity of Greenland. The rights granted to the United States were
extensive. They included, among others, the authority to deepen harbors and
anchorages, to construct roads and fortifications, and, in general, "the right
to do any and all things necessary to insure the efficient operation,
maintenance and protection" of whatever defense facilities were established. It
was agreed that the areas necessary for these purposes would be leased to the
United States. A comparison with the British Base Agreement, signed only twelve
days before, is unavoidable. Of the two, the Greenland defense agreement was
much less comprehensive and thus permitted the United States considerably more
latitude. That is to say, there was far more room for discussion
and negotiation and possibly misunderstandings. Both agreements committed the
respective governments to a speedy execution of formal leases and both provided
that the use of the leased areas by the United States was not to be delayed
pending the execution of the leases.10
The Greenland agreement then granted to
the United States three particular rights by explicit provision: the
right of exclusive jurisdiction over all persons within the leased areas except
Danish citizens and native Greenlanders; the right to establish postal
facilities and commissaries; and the right of exemption from

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COAST GUARD TUG AIDING FREIGHTER OFF GREENLAND

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customs duties on all materials and equipment used in the defense
areas and from all personal taxation on American workmen and military
personnel.11 Only three limitations on the exercise of these rights were expressly
laid down: the United States, in locating the defense areas, undertook to give
the "fullest consideration consistent with military necessity . . . to
the welfare, health and economic needs of the native populations"; as for
the facilities to be built there, the United States promised that they would
be made available to the aircraft and vessels "of all the American Nations"
for purposes of hemisphere defense; and lastly the United States undertook to
"respect all legitimate interests in Greenland" as well as all laws
and customs pertaining to the native population and to give "sympathetic
consideration to all representations" by the local authorities respecting
the welfare of the inhabitants.12

Greenland's Strategic Importance Reappraised

By this time the impetus that had originally turned the War
Department's attentions toward Greenland was given new force by the Air Corps,
which had been casting about for the best way to assist the transatlantic
ferrying operations of the British. A number of proposals were considered. One
of the more modest of them was presented by General Arnold himself, and this
suggestion, that the United States take over the delivery of planes from the
factory to some transfer point like Montreal or Presque Isle, Me., was quickly
adopted. It was decided, also, to establish an air transport service between
Washington and the United Kingdom. During March, April, and May, other proposals
were studied and rejected. The question of whether to develop a route for
short-range planes was still unsettled when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
A proposal that the United States accept responsibility over the entire
transatlantic ferry route, which had been rejected in the spring, had not been
accepted by the time the United States became an actual belligerent. Whether
laid aside or still in question, these two proposals nevertheless provided
justification for building airfields in Greenland. Even if other means for
delivering short-range planes to England could be provided sooner, an air route
should be developed simultaneously, argued General Arnold. And apart from this
matter of ferrying short-range planes, it was sound aviation doctrine, he
pointed out, to have alternate fields available for use in the transport
operations already decided upon, or in patrol and reconnaissance

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operations.13
These considerations explain the Army's interest in
the survey of Greenland that was planned for the early summer of 1941.

Although in General Arnold's opinion there were only two
reasons for establishing bases in Greenland, namely, protecting convoys and
ferrying planes, there was in actual fact another element which was becoming
increasingly decisive.14
This was the defense of Greenland itself. The problem--for,
because of the terrain, the climate and general physical features, it could not
be considered otherwise--was a dual one. It involved, first, the fact that
Greenland was a major source of cryolite for the aluminum industry of the United
States and Canada and, second, that it was the breeding ground of western
Europe's storms.

One well-directed shot from the deck gun of a German
submarine or a clever act of sabotage by one of the workmen could have seriously
damaged the cryolite mine at Ivigtut, might have perhaps put it out of operation
and thereby disrupted the Canadian aluminum industry, on which Allied aircraft
production was heavily dependent. To prevent this, the local authorities had
organized a mine guard armed with rifles and a few machine guns and had obtained
from the United States a 3-inch antiaircraft gun manned by former U.S. Coast
Guard gunners. Then, during the first weeks of April 1941, the success of
German arms in the Mediterranean aroused President Roosevelt's concern for the
safety of the Atlantic outposts. At his insistence the War Department hastened
to garrison Bermuda and Trinidad and to send reinforcements to Newfoundland. As
soon as the Greenland defense agreement was signed, the general question of a
defense plan was tossed into the lap of the Army-Navy
Joint Board.15
As early as
16 April, on several occasions during the next three months, and particularly
after the Bismarck episode, the Canadian Government expressed its doubt
and solicitude about the adequacy of the defenses at Ivigtut. The War Department
unhesitatingly rejected a Canadian offer to provide a garrison, although both
the War and Navy Departments shared to some extent the concern of the Canadian
Government. While the State Department in an aide-mémoire drawn up with
the advice of the War Department was informing the Canadian Gov-

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ernment that "the measures which have been and will be taken . . .
are believed to be all that are practical both from the point of view of
timeliness and of extent," the War Plans Division was at the same time informing
the Chief of Staff that these measures were inadequate and that the estimated
size of the garrison planned for Ivigtut should be increased from approximately
100 men to about 480.16
After this increase had been approved and the plans
changed accordingly, the War Plans Division considered the cryolite mine to be
sufficiently well protected, although the first defense force did not actually
arrive at Ivigtut until well after the beginning of the new year, 1942. By that
time it had been whittled down to one officer and twelve
enlisted men.17

The second factor in the defense problem--the value of
Greenland as a base for meteorological observations--had been responsible for
what turned out to be the first violations of Western Hemisphere territory by
Nazi Germany. During the summer of 1940 the German Government had organized in
Norway a number of expeditions for the purpose of establishing radio and weather
stations in northeastern Greenland, in the neighborhood of Scoresby Sound.
Although manned, it would seem, by Norwegians and Danes, and led by a Dane,
these weather stations were under German control and were operated for the
purpose of assisting the German naval and military effort. The British therefore
undertook immediate countermeasures. A mixed British-Norwegian landing party
seized a supply of aviation gasoline, dismantled several radio stations, and
took into custody a number of heavily armed Danish "hunters" found on the coast.
This was in late August or early September 1940. A few weeks afterward the
British intercepted another vessel off the coast of Greenland with about fifty
Germans, some of them meteorologists, on board.18
All this activity at the top of
the Western Hemisphere was a source of much concern to Secretary of State Hull.
The British in Iceland were maintaining close watch, attempting by means of
radio direction finders to locate any clandestine weather broadcasts from
Greenland; but in the absence of continuous air and naval patrols German
intruders ran a fair

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TROOPS EXAMINE GERMAN PARACHUTE KIT found at site of abandoned German radio base in Greenland.

chance of being undisturbed. By the spring of 1941 there was
a strong suspicion in Washington that one of the German-controlled weather
stations was still operating. Reports continued to reach the War Department of
German planes sighted over Scoresby Sound, of an unidentified vessel off
Julianehaab, of a strange plane high over Disko Bay, and of German plans to land
a force somewhere on Greenland's eastern coast.19

The information that a German landing impended came to the
War Department from the Navy, but at the same time the Navy Department made it
clear that the report was of questionable reliability. In the meantime a
dispatch from the military attaché in London reported that a German detachment
was believed to have already established itself in the neighborhood of Scoresby
Sound. President Roosevelt, who a few days earlier had asked the

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War and Navy Departments for recommendations to forestall an
act of this kind, brought the matter up at a Cabinet meeting on Friday,
25 April.20
As Secretary Stimson later remembered it

The President mentioned the rumor that had come up to the
effect that the Germans already had a force landed on the east coast of
Greenland. He said that the British Admiralty and the Navy were not inclined to
believe the rumor but the War Department did believe it and that he was inclined
to believe the War Department.21

The President agreed with his advisers that the situation
called for a well-armed naval expedition rather than an Army garrison. He
approved the idea of sending one or two Navy patrol planes to Iceland for an
inspection flight or two over the Scoresby Sound area, but he disagreed with the
suggestion that Iceland be used as a more or less permanent base of patrol plane
operations. The upshot was that the Navy proceeded to organize an east coast
"survey" party for which the Coast Guard provided specially equipped vessels and
experienced crews. For the time being the Army's assistance was
not required.22
The War Department could therefore concentrate its attention, so far as
concerned Greenland, on constructing the airfields and on garrisoning the west coast.

Establishing the BLUIE Bases

As soon as the negotiations with the Danish Minister were
sufficiently advanced, President Roosevelt authorized the War Department to go
ahead with the preparations for building the airfields. For this purpose he gave
his approval to the expenditure of approximately $5,000,000 from funds
previously allocated for constructing the bases acquired from the British.
General Arnold, who; as Chief of the Air Corps, was at once placed in charge of
all matters pertaining to the Greenland airfields, was immediately directed to
start assembling the necessary construction equipment, materials, and personnel,
but within a week some of his responsibility had been shifted over to the War
Plans Division. For the sake of conformity, Colonel Anderson, acting head of the
War Plans Division, proposed on 9 April that the development program be placed
under the direction and coordination of

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the War Plans Division, as had been done in the case of all
the other outlying bases. His recommendation, approved on 11 April, was formally
adopted on 17 April.23

During the following month the several interested divisions
of the General Staff worked out the various details of the construction force.
A momentary hitch developed when the Navy Department decided it could not spare
any of its transports because of the two months' layover that would be required
at the base; but this particular problem was solved by the War Department's
transferring to the Navy a recently acquired Army transport, the U.S.S. Munargo,
to be fitted out and used for the movement, and in addition to the Munargo,
the veteran troopship Chateau Thierry was later assigned. As decided
upon in mid-April, the Greenland force consisted of one battalion (minus one
company), 21st Engineers (AVN), reinforced by a composite battery, 62d Coast
Artillery (AA), plus the necessary service troops. The departure, originally
scheduled for 19 May, was delayed a whole month for repairs to be made to the
Munargo; but on 19 June the two ships sailed out of New York Harbor with
the 469 officers and men of the Greenland force
on board.24
Col. Benjamin F. Giles, Air Corps, was in command.

Six days later the Munargo and the Chateau Thierry
were at Argentia, Newfoundland, taking on fuel and fresh water and awaiting
word of ice conditions farther North. Soon the bay became a busy place. One
evening, a day or two after the Greenland force arrived, a flotilla of United
States destroyers, followed by four or five Navy transports, loomed out of the
heavy fog and slipped into the harbor. By next morning two battleships of the
Atlantic Fleet, several more destroyers and the cruisers Nashville and
Brooklyn had joined the assemblage along with four troopships loaded with
marines. These new arrivals--transports, troopships, destroyers, battleships,
and cruisers--were the ships of Task Force 19, the first task force organized by
the Navy for foreign service in World War II.25
It was bound for Iceland. The
plans

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for this movement had been going through the mill
simultaneously with the Greenland preparations, for the President early in June
had decided to establish an American garrison in Iceland and to set up a base
there for patrol operations like those he had vetoed at the end of April. The
marines were the first element of the garrison, to be followed in the course of
the summer by sizable units of the Army Air Forces and of the 5th Division so
that by August Iceland would bulk larger than Greenland in Army planning; but of
these subsequent doings neither the marines nor Colonel Giles and his men could
have had any knowledge. Leaving the Iceland convoy behind, the Greenland force
resumed its voyage on 30 June and a week or so later arrived off Narsarssuak.
There the major U.S. Army and Navy base in Greenland, BLUIE WEST I,
was built.26

By the end of September 1941, when the contractor's people
arrived, the troops at BLUIE WEST I had erected
85 buildings, about two-thirds
of the total needed for the initial force, and had begun to install the
necessary utilities. They had built three miles of access roads, constructed a
temporary dock, and started work on the airfield. By the time the civilian
construction force arrived they had finished grading one of the two runways and
had a metal landing mat partly laid. BLUIE WEST I
was thus one of the earliest
U.S. Army airfields, if not the first, to make actual use of steel matting in
runway construction, an important engineering development that was still being
tested two months later in the Carolina maneuvers and one that afterwards
contributed greatly to the winning of the war, in the Pacific particularly.
After the arrival of the civilian construction force the engineer battalion,
reinforced by a company of the 42d Engineers (General Service), concentrated
exclusively on airfield construction. They continued to do so until February
1942 when the civilian force took over this work as well. By then the first
runway was ready for limited use.

Meanwhile, similar progress had been made at Søndre
Strømfjord (BLUIE WEST 8),
where the first construction party, a civilian force,
arrived late in September. The airfield, begun during the first two weeks of
November, was almost completely graded by the beginning of January 1942, when
the first plane landed on the runway.27
During the following summer, when the

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movement of the Eighth Air Force to England put the two
Greenland airfields to their severest test, migrating aircraft had to share the
runways with bulldozers and rollers and all the other paraphernalia of
construction; for work was still in progress although the fields were usable.

The troops at BLUIE WEST I were added to from time to time
during the late summer and early fall of 1941 until by mid-October they numbered
about 665 men, two-thirds of whom were Engineers. A small detachment of about
thirty men made up the entire Army force at BLUIE WEST 8.
An even smaller party
operated a radio range and direction finding station on Simiutak Island, about
45 miles from the main base at BLUIE WEST I, and another detachment manned a
weather station at Angmagssalik, on the east coast near the Arctic Circle. When
war engulfed the United States in December the Army's Greenland forces
altogether totaled approximately 750 men.28

From the beginning the garrison enjoyed excellent relations
with the local populace. The Danish authorities in Greenland gave the American
command their full cooperation and advice at all times, without which the
problems of establishing the bases would have been greatly magnified. Troops and
civilian workmen acquitted themselves well.29
That there were no AWOL's or
desertions is perhaps not too surprising since there were no places to go, but
the fact that there were likewise no courts-martial, at least during the first
year, is a record of which any commanding officer can be proud.

Command arrangements followed the precedent recently worked
out for the Newfoundland Base Command. Tactical control was at first vested
in the Commanding General, First Army and responsibility for supply in the Commanding
General, Second Corps Area. The latter's responsibility did not however extend
to construction matters, all the administration and supply of which were controlled
by the Chief of Engineers through the Division Engineer, Eastern Division. When
Greenland, along with Newfoundland, was placed directly under GHQ in July the
Commanding General, First Army, was thereby relieved of his responsibility for
tactical command. The intention was that as soon as the necessary facilities
were constructed the Greenland Base Command would be constituted and would operate
as a task force under GHQ. Although the Greenland Base Command was not

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formally activated until 26 November 1941, the Army
forces in Greenland were going by that name as early as 15
July, which was the date they had passed under the
control of GHQ.30
The appointment of an Air Corps officer, Colonel Giles, to
command them followed the same principle of functional allocation on which the
appointment of an Air Corps officer to command at Newfoundland had been based.
It was an explicit recognition of the fact that the principal operations would
consist of "staging operations involved in the movement of medium range aircraft
to England and air operations involved in the defense of Greenland,
particularly the air base and Ivigtut."31

The Defense of Greenland

With Greenland, as with many other outposts of the Western
Hemisphere, the War Department faced the problem of passing safely between the
Scylla of remote contingency and the Charybdis of immediate need. The question
of what ought to be planned for and what on the other hand could be, or had to
be, provided posed a dilemma that would have to be resolved if plans and
preparations were to bear any relation to each other.

Throughout the summer and fall of 1941, while the
construction program was being pushed forward, the War Plans Division and the
Army-Navy Joint Board were drawing up the specifications for the defense of
Greenland, which GHQ then converted into the actual blueprints. As the Army-Navy
Joint Board viewed it, the defense of Greenland would require, first, fleet
operations to deny major enemy forces access to the Greenland area, second, the
local defense of vulnerable points, third, surface and air patrols of the entire
coast during seasons favorable to minor enemy operations, fourth, a system of
civilian observation posts, and fifth, appropriate reserve forces held in
readiness to repel minor attacks and dislodge enemy units. According to the
joint Board planners the most vulnerable points, those that would require local
defenses, would be any American installation in Greenland and the cryolite mine
at Ivigtut. Because of the terrain and the climate these defenses could be
mutually supporting only to the extent of providing small detachments of troops
specially trained and equipped and serving with the principal garrisons who
would be ready at all times to move by sea to the vicinity of any threat.
Depending upon the state of aviation supplies at the

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airfields in Greenland, the use of air reinforcements "of
minor strength" from Newfoundland would be possible.32
These considerations were
the basis of the permanent garrisons authorized for BLUIE WEST I and Ivigtut.
Upon the departure of the initial forces in June the approved figures stood at
181 officers, 20 nurses, and 1,849 enlisted men for BLUIE WEST I and 21
officers, 2 nurses, and 459 enlisted men for Ivigtut. A reduction in the Ivigtut
garrison, down to 302 officers and men, was effected by eliminating the infantry
unit; otherwise the authorized strength in October remained the same as it had
been four months before.33
After orders had gone out to all the Atlantic bases
in September to resist by force the intrusion of any German or Italian military
planes and vessels of war there had been some thought that a garrison of 1,500
men could be established in Greenland before winter set in. But very shortly the
build-up was postponed until the following spring. Until May 1942 the only
combat unit in Greenland was the antiaircraft battery at BLUIE
WEST I. Meanwhile
GHQ had drawn up the defense plans for Ivigtut and the cryolite mine and for air
warning installations.34

The problem of the defenses at Ivigtut had two sides: one,
whether additional measures in protection of the cryolite mine were required at
the moment; and second, what should be done after 1 April 1942, when the
contract of the civilian mine guard expired. On the immediate question, GHQ and
the War Plans Division, as well as the commanding officer in Greenland, Colonel
Giles, were agreed that to send an Army defense force to Ivigtut was not an
urgent matter. The building that would have to be done at Ivigtut, it was
decided, might interrupt the more essential work at BLUIE
WEST I. Should it seem
expedient for other than military reasons to replace the mine guard by American
troops, as the State Department intimated it might be, the arrival of a garrison
would be hastened, the War Department suggested, by putting some of the cryolite
company's employees to work erecting the necessary housing, which the Army could
supply in prefabricated form. Nothing came of the suggestion. The officials of
the mining company, who had not concealed their misgivings over what they
considered the defenseless state of the place, were agreeable to the use of
their employees; but they considered the Army's proposal impracticable, while
the State Department and the Office of Production Management believed that it

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would, if acted upon, temporarily disrupt the mining
operations. The question of what to do in the spring was more easily answered
(perhaps one might say more easily avoided), since the Army expected to be able
by that time to start building the housing and other facilities necessary for a
garrison at Ivigtut. A naval vessel, the Greenland Government suggested, could
be stationed at the cryolite port to bridge any gap between the departure of the
mine guard and the arrival of an Army garrison.35
There the matter was resting
when the attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into the war.

Immediately the War Department was made acutely aware of even
the smallest chink in the nation's armor. Within a week G-2 began calling
attention to the inadequacy of the Ivigtut defenses. Officials of the State
Department, of the War Production Board, of the Ivigtut mining company and of
one of the two principal cryolite processing companies in the United States all
expressed anxiety about the situation. Toward the end of December a naval vessel
was stationed in the harbor to reinforce the mine guard, an arrangement which
accorded with the Greenland Government's suggestion and which both GHQ and the
War Plans Division considered adequate for
the time being.36
Conferences with
the manager of the mine and the commander of the Coast Guard's Greenland Patrol
resulted in the Army's agreeing to take over the duties of the mine guard on 1
April 1942, except those that had to do with internal protection for which the
Greenland Government would provide. When the first construction forces went to
Ivigtut late in March a defense unit of one officer and twelve enlisted men was
sent out from BLUIE WEST I to replace the
mine guard.37

An interesting contribution to the defense of Greenland was
the Northeast Greenland dog sledge patrol organized in the summer of 1941 as a
joint endeavor of the Army, the United States Coast Guard, and the Greenland
Government. All the activity on the east coast the year before had demonstrated
the ease with which anyone could establish a foothold in the vast Arctic wastes,
the near impossibility of finding a hostile force that had established itself,
and the difficulty of dislodging one, once it was discovered. An air patrol of
the east coast, even after the new bases were completed,

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would be extremely difficult, since the distance that would
have to be covered was as far as from Newfoundland to Key West, Fla. The naval
patrol maintained by the Coast Guard was limited by ice conditions. What
appeared to be the ideal solution, and the one recommended by the Coast Guard,
was to organize a dog sledge patrol for reconnoitering the isolated areas of the
east coast. After some hesitation the War Department agreed to bear the expense,
to furnish part of the equipment, and to provide what air coverage it could. The
Coast Guard, for its part, would transport the patrols and equipment to their
stations and keep them supplied. The Greenland administration in turn agreed to
recruit the men and provide the dogs.

The patrol had scarcely begun operations when it proved its
worth by assisting in the capture of the trawler Buskoe on 12 September,
as that vessel, a small German-controlled Norwegian ship, was attempting to
establish a radio and weather station in the Mackenzie Bay area. There had been
some skepticism, however, in the War Department, and by the end of the year
there were those who had begun to wonder whether the results justified the
expense involved.38
Had it been a matter of merely hiring a few Eskimos to
patrol the neighborhood of their villages with their own dog sledges the $2,000
or so the Army was spending each month on the patrol might have been excessive
indeed. But as it was, except on the west coast north of Holsteinsborg, dog
sledging was unknown in Greenland and, except for the settlements at
Angmagssalik (BLUIE EAST 2) and Scoresby Sound, the entire east coast was
uninhabited. This meant that dogs, sledges; and drivers had to be brought in
either from halfway up the west coast, a distance to Scoresby Sound of at least
2,400 miles, or from the continent.39
On one occasion a team of sledge dogs was
imported from the United States by way of Iceland. The patrol, whose principal
function was to report Nazis attempting to land in the guise of innocent
hunters, had to be recruited from Danish and Norwegian hunters of proven
loyalty. All this was expensive. The sledge patrol nevertheless survived the
early doubts within the War Department, was afterward given military status as a
unit of the U.S. Army, and in 1943-44, when the tempo of operations increased,
the patrol found itself in the thick of combat. But that is another chapter of the story.

Footnotes

2.
In addition to the usual staff studies, the War Department
had engaged the noted explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson to prepare a work on Greenland.
His manuscript, A Guide Book for Greenland, 3 vols., is a detailed
description of the climate and physical features of the country.
A highly useful summary of information is Austin H. Clark, Iceland and Greenland,
Smithsonian Institution, Publication 3735 (Washington, 1943).

9.
The agreement of 9 April 1941 has been published in
Department of State Executive Agreement Series 204, Publication 1602.
See also Memo, WPD for Gen Bryden, 10 Apr 41,
sub: Greenland, WPD 4173-25;
Memo, Gen Arnold for COB, 2 Apr 41;
Ltr, SW to President, 3 Apr 41.
Both in WPD 4173-16.

18.
Ltr, Secy State to SW, 16 Jun 41, inclosing
Memo written by a member of one of the 1940 expeditions, WPD 4173-100;
Memo, CNO for Ship Movements Div et.al., 6 May 41,
sub: Army and Navy Operations in Greenland, 1941, WPD 4173-45;
Langer and Gleason, Challenge to Isolation, pp. 686-87.

26.
In a memorandum (WPD 4173-95), dated 8 July 1941, to the Assistant Chief of Staff,
Colonel Crawford, reports the Munargo as having entered the fjord that morning
and being delayed there by ice. On the other hand, the arrival date is given as
6 July in U.S. Army Bases, Greenland, Section IV, pages 1, 4 (North Atlantic Division,
Corps of Engineers, in OCMH).
BLUIE was the code name for Greenland.